Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po is formulating the Budget for the new year, and the government is facing the dilemma of “a clever woman cannot make a living without rice”.
At the beginning of last year, it was originally expected that the fiscal deficit in 2023-24 would be NT$57 billion, but now it is expected to be NT$100 billion. At the beginning of last year, it was originally expected that the following year, that is, 2024-25, would record a surplus of NT$9.6 billion. Increase. However, now, Mr. Cai has predicted that it will still not be able to turn a profit by 2024-25. Even in the new fiscal budget, there will still be a budget deficit.
This fiscal year has a deficit of 100 billion, which is 43 billion more than the original budget. One of the main shortfalls is revenue from land sales. The government originally expected to generate NT$85 billion in revenue from land sales this year, but as a result, the revenue so far is only NT$12.3 billion. It is estimated that the bill will be NT$70 billion less than the budget. This NT$70 billion alone is enough to explain the huge increase in the deficit compared with the original budget. The future is still not optimistic, because according to the current real estate market, the land sales income next year may not rise significantly compared with this year. If the income is still only more than 10 billion, the shortfall of 70 billion will have to rely on other figures. Come fill it in.
The Prime Minister has made it clear that he will increase revenue and reduce expenditure. He will maintain zero growth in the number of civil servants this year, and even save 1% of current expenses for each department.
I am afraid that these cost-saving measures are still not enough. One of the key points that can be considered is Hong Kong’s education expenditure. This year’s education expenditure is 104 billion yuan, an increase of 6.4% over the previous year, accounting for 18.6% of the government’s recurrent expenditure. an important part of government spending.
Investing in education in the future should not be frugal. Especially if Hong Kong wants to develop new industries such as innovation and technology, it should increase investment in university education. The problem is that six years ago, there was a political wave of “go big, go fast” in education expenditure in Hong Kong. At that time, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was running for chief executive and proposed to increase recurrent education expenditure by 5 billion per year. As a result, four days after taking office in 2017, she announced the implementation of the first 3.6 billion yuan in education expenditure, under the name of “New Resources for Education”. This includes increasing the class-teacher ratio in primary and secondary schools, launching self-financing vouchers of NT$30,000, and increasing the funds available to various types of schools. Subsequently, in the fiscal budget in February 2018, education expenditures were further increased by 2 billion yuan, a huge increase that raised eyebrows.
At that time, political circles generally believed that the Carrie Lam government’s massive increase in education spending was motivated by political considerations. Because the traditional pan-democrats with the Education Association as the core have always been the main force against the government, they have significantly increased investment in education, which has the flavor of “buying the Education Association to fear”. I once heard a middle school principal lament that the government had added too many new school resources, and his headache was how to spend the money.
The government has introduced a 1% recurring expenditure saving target and requires all departments to implement it. This is also the most direct approach to financial management. But when further increasing savings, we should treat them differently and look at the needs of different fields. Hong Kong is facing a low birth rate and aging population, and the number of students has dropped significantly. Take the year when Carrie Lam took office in 2017 as an example. There were 51,192 day school candidates for the Diploma of Secondary Education Examination that year. Six years later, last year, by 2023 There were only 42,903 day school candidates for the Diploma Examination, a drop of 16.2% in six years. As the number of students decreases, should expenditures be reduced?
Universities will attract more foreign students and develop into an industry, which will also be crucial to Hong Kong’s future new industries such as innovation and technology. It is difficult to shrink university resources, but there is a lot of room for shrinking the resources of primary and secondary schools. Therefore, the government should re-examine the education expenditure in 2017 to see how much room there is, turn the clock back to 2017, compress redundant and wasted resources, and retain precious resources for other necessary purposes.
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Lu Yongxiong
2024-01-12 16:00:00
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